They ARE Principled but lacking, in raging against the machine...

They ARE Principled but lacking, in raging against the machine...

September 23, 2022

A 17-year-old kid took a good crack at crashing the video game economy lately.  This is a complicated social phenomenon, isn't it?  I remember when the convenient raison d'être for hackers was that security was weak on the adult shit.  That kid who pulled up the Wi-Fi password listings of everyone on the dorm hall, because that was how the equipment he had worked.  That kind of stuff, totally justified by being a wastoid exploring his stuff and being really bored.  But this has changed in a really fundamental discursive way, hasn't it?  It's related to the way people relate, especially to myth, and especially the myth of groups like Anonymous.  Hacking as righteous retribution: OK now.  They were legit part of the Ukraine war effort weren't they?  And they are always on the right side of history, over and over.  And now they're on the right side of popular opinion with the Ukraine fad.  Absolutely.  But it's hard to rationalize.  And where goes the legion known as Anonymous so goes the whole hacking population, doesn't it?  When they go to war, every other goes to a state of war.  This is the state of computers now, and what's the use of talking about the past of it?  How does that song go?

"I don't want to talk about the way that it was."

I guess it's worth considering the question to be asked about stuff like this 17-year-old's motivations: what exactly is your beef?  It would be worth it to know.  And generally, as hacking goes from casual and lighthearted mischief to principled opposition to something, with perhaps justified and justifiable malice.  So, does this kid hate video games?  See, I don't think so.  I think that the real social phenomenon that this represents, is the increasing compartmentalization of society and the Internet.  People who have these hacking skills but are both isolated and swept up into the political zeitgeist of trying to be a principled attacker of "the system" that everyone is raging against.  And yet, those isolated and not at all willing to change to properly apply their powers, and unwilling to do anything outside of the interests of their friend group.  In a sense, we might call this, principles without purpose.  It's performative, absolutely, but it's sort of desirous of having it known that they too rage against the system.  But it's self-sabotaging too.  To do what you are doing without the courage to properly do it, but wanting just your friends to know that you could do it if you tried - but above all not willing to lose friends to do the right thing.  And this is what explains the phenomenon to my mind.  Most of all the blind they can't see beyond, is that, their friends, no matter who they are or how connected, are not the whole state, and often not the state at all.  And they are raging against whatever their friends are into as a stand-in for raging against the machine.